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Star Wars Galaxies System Revamps
Star Wars Galaxies has been out for over a year now, and Sony Online will be attempting one of the most ambitious moves in a MMOG to date. They're completely overhauling the combat and loot systems for their game. Now that Jump to Lightspeed is finally out, they've made available high level concepts for the combat revamp, concepts for the loot revamp, and actual data on the first loot revamp pass. From the combat revamp: "Star Wars Galaxies is making bold changes to its extensive in-game combat system. The goal of this all-encompassing set of changes is to make game play more strategic, more interactive and ultimately more engaging and fun for players of all levels."
It might be too late, but I hope it's an idea that spreads otu over the MMORPG community. It's way too easy to turn a game into "level treadmill + loot hunt". I like the weird things that pop up, one of the reasons why Monkey Island will always be my favorite series. I'm all for this idea, and if implemented correctly I might even go pay for the privilage to play on it. It'd be interesting to find a data disk and pad, and end up with a wanted poster for Solo or Skywalker.
I played SWG for about 4 months in beta, and about 6 months after release. My questions is, how did they get this so wrong? I mean, combat and loot are two MAJOR gameplay components.
This is a design flaw that was either overlooked or ignored because of the rush to release a product that wasn't ready for release. Either way, this is a project management issue, and should not be tolerated. Why should players wait 1.5 years after release for fundamental game systems to be fixed - especially while paying a monthly fee?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
SWG is not the same game it was a year ago, and I like the organic nature. I actually appreciate that SOE is willing to invest in rethinking major parts of the game, mostly driven by user feedback. Any good software evolves over its life cycle. And in an MMOG it's impossible to know what the in-game dynamics are going to be until you have an active population.
I know a lot of people get frustrated when their chosen profession gets nerfed, but you should just roll with the punches and treat them as new challenges. Think of it as similar to adding a new quest. As a Droid Engineer I went through some major revamps of the way droids work, but the end result has been better for the game. And while I have sympathy for Creature Handlers who went from the most envied profession to insignificance, it is much more Star Wars-like to use droids and vehicles than it was when everyone had three pets.
The loot revamp serves to respond to how much players like loot, adding more dimension to the loot drop experience. Everyone loves getting low-use schematics to craft rare items and the revamp is expanding on that idea.
Combat on the ground is a big issue, being very much a turn-based experience. You queue up your actions and hope they beat out the sequence of actions your opponent (player or mob) queues up. The JTL expansion has FPS combat between ships, which is in sharp contrast to the ground combat system. A better system for combat is definitely desired.
Predictability: All NPC's should have loot and players should have a rough idea of what loot is available from which NPC and to some degree the lewt should be phat.
Ugh...
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